History Literature / TheBerenstainBears

* NotInThisForYourRevolution: In the Big Chapter Book ''and the Showdown At Chainsaw Gap'', Brother finds that Two-Ton Grizzly is joining the protestors who are trying to stop Birder's Woods, home of the endangered (and until recently, thought-to-be ''extinct'') Yellow Poppinjay, from being cut down. Brother is surprised because he didn't think Two-Ton (despite being a reasonable adult) cared about an endangered bird; Queenie admits that he doesn't, but he ''does'' like living and working in the wide open areas outside Beartown, and isn't happy about a new housing development -- which would be built with the wood gained from cutting down the trees -- being put up next to "his space".

* [[NotNowKiddo Not Now, Dear]]: In ''Too Much Pressure'', Papa tries to warn Mama that the spark plugs of the car need cleaning, but Mama, who's already been running herself ragged trying to keep up with the cubs' busy schedules, cuts Papa off and drives away. This later leads to the car breaking down on their busiest day yet.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: When Papa breaks his promise to not attempt to get more Wild, Wild Honey in the 1980s cartoon episode "The Great Honey Pipeline" via building the titular pipeline, Brother and Sister get several of the other animals they know to not only return the honey to Queen Nectar and her hive, they use that same pipeline to send the smell of skunk spray towards Papa the next time he tries to get honey; Papa later gets [[ExiledToTheCouch forced to sleep in a tent]] due to smelling bad to ensure that he learned his lesson about not breaking a promise.

** In "Gets In A Fight" Papa Bear tells them that fights happen all the time and they come and go like the weather. He uses the stormclouds clearing outside to illustrate. Since Brother and Sister can't even remember why they started fighting in the first place, they agree to make up.

The entirety of the 2003 series is available (outside the US & Canada) on Website/YouTube [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUIixndCOJ8waZQoavUVxMSWIDX4Cpm3B here]], thanks to Nelvana's Treehouse Direct channel and the complete series was also made available on DVD for those who prefer that format. PBS still releases some episodes of the show on DVDs and continues to exclusively distribute the series in the US as of today.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Ralph Ripoff is established as a conman that constantly engages in [[GetRichQuickScheme Get-Rich-Quick Schemes]]. In the Big Chapter Book ''in the Freaky Funhouse'', however, it turns out [[spoiler:he didn't know his ringmaster friend would scam Dr. Grizzly out of funds for a hospital charity and gets angry when she tearfully explains to him. No one should steal from hospitals. He goes to confront the circus and nearly gets killed]].

** In the Big Chapter Book ''And the Dress Code'', Queenie's mother is upset when her daughter is sent home from school for wearing a miniskirt, since Queenie was inspired by the outfits her mother wore as a cub. She calls the principal and asks why Miss Glitch, who isn't even Queenie's teacher, was allowed to do such a thing.

* ActingForTwo: An in-universe example in the Big Chapter Book ''in the Freaky Funhouse'', where some of the circus performers are also employees. For example, the circus boss Captain Billy is also the ringmaster, his enforcer Otto is Primo the [[WorldsStrongestMan World’s Strongest Bear]], and their head clown is the janitor.

* BirthdayPartyGoesWrong: In episode "Too Much Birthday", Sister Bear has a bad sixth birthday because she was the first one out on Musical Chairs, picked first for Spin the Bottle, didn't win anything for Pin the Tail on the Donkey, the pony she rides on gave her a bumpy ride and taking her six tries to blow out her candles, which made her friends claim she was going to have six cubs and she only wanted three. Thankfully, it comes around when she's told she hasn't opened any of her presents yet, and it was cake and ice cream time.
* BigBrotherInstinct: Brother has this for Sister Bear, so that he's prepared to beat up Tuffy up until realizing that she's a girl. He then goes to Plan B, teaching Sister how to defend herself.
** This instinct has since expanded to most of the school, with Brother being actively famous for defending bullying victims.

* CheatersNeverProsper: ''The Big Road Race'' has five cars participating in the titular race. The driver in green decides to play dirty late in the race to eliminate the last large car, and thinks he's got it won as a result... but ends up losing to Little Red (Brother Bear), who was never careless or cheated throughout the race.

** In the Big Chapter Book ''And the School Scandal Sheet'', Queenie spots Teacher Bob having dinner with a teenaged girl and assumes they're on a date, so she takes a picture of them (unbeknownest to both of them) and sneaks it in the gossip page of the underground newspaper the Newspaper Club is publishing to protest against Miss Glitch's ironclad control of the newspaper. Unfortunately, the teen turns out to be [[RelativeError Teacher Bob's niece]] who's visiting him to look at colleges in the area, something Brother, the editor of the underground newspaper, knew for a fact as Mama had her over for tea a couple of days prior. Brother angrily informs her that had she not gone behind his back to put the photo in, he would have killed the story on the spot and they wouldn't have pissed off Teacher Bob and so many of the teachers (who also know the teen is his niece). Not only is [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone Queenie horrified that she accidentally had her teacher accused of unprofessional behavior]], it ultimately led to the writers of the secondary newspaper getting exposed because Brother felt so guilty he confessed everything to Sister, which led to the school authorities finding out when Sister decides to tell Mama because she's worried about what would happen if the school authorities didn't find out who the writers were sooner.

* DressCode: The Big Chapter Book ''And the Dress Code'' revolves around one; the plot starts when the annual run of new spring fashions (or "rad clothes") starts getting out of hand at Bear Country School, in part out of rebellion after SternTeacher Miss Glitch orders Queenie [=McBear=] to go home and change due to disapproving her choice of clothing (a very short miniskirt) despite only being on hall duty and ''not'' being Queenie's teacher, and not even sending her to the principal's office first. Vice-Principal Grizzmeyer, who becomes acting principal while Principal Honeycomb is out of town on school-related business, fully supports Miss Glitch because he also disapproves of the rad clothes, and institutes a dress code specifically aimed at banning them, along with roping other adults outside the school into the movement against them. When the cubs turn to LoopholeAbuse to get past the rules, he keeps updating it to try and close the loopholes, until it boils down to "Any cub who shows up in clothes ''I'' don't approve of will be sent home, no exceptions". The cubs respond by threatening to refuse to come to school unless he backs down. Finally, some other adults persuade both sides to agree to debate, which the cubs win handily via revealing the three lead adults in the anti-rad movement [[IWasQuiteAFashionVictim were no better in their youth]]. After the anti-rad group concedes, Principal Honeycomb reveals he's returned early and declares an end to the dress code, along with instituting casual Fridays, which satisfies the students and leads them to tone down the clothes of their own free will.

* ExiledToTheCouch: a variation happens in the 1980s cartoon; see HoistByHisOwnPetard example.

** The 1985 animated series has "The Coughing Catfish", dealing with water pollution (the catfish coughs due to the water being all dirty and polluted.)

* {{Hypocrite}}: In the Big Chapter Book ''And the Dress Code'', one of the teachers turns up at the Bear family's house to drum up support for a scheduled meeting for a debate about the dress code. Brother happens to be present and asks about the band concert that was previously scheduled at that time. When the teacher brushes off his concerns by claiming the debate is more important and the concert will be rescheduled, Brother storms up to his room in a fit of temper. The narration tells us Brother and the rest of the band want the concert (a school-sponsored event) to be over soon so they can move on; the hypocrisy of the teachers disrupting school events for their own desires (which they had claimed the cubs' fashion choices had been doing) so angers Brother that he goes from being a mildly annoyed but overall neutral party to [[LetsGetDangerous a ringleader of the kids' side of the debate who is ultimately indirectly responsible for their win]].
* HypocriteHasAPoint: In ''Get the Gimmies'', Papa Bear despairs over the increasingly bratty behavior of Brother and Sister, who keep wanting all manner of toys and trinkets. [[ParentalHypocrisy Later, his own parents gently remind him that he acted much the same way when he was a cub.]] Nonetheless, they understand his fear of his children becoming [[SpoiledBrat Spoiled Brats]] and help him curb their behavior.
** In ''The Berenstain Bears and the School Scandal Sheet'', the cubs who are working on the titular scandal sheet are clearly breaking the rules and doing things that upset and even harm the school staff but said school staff basically ignored any and all of their desires when it came to writing for the school newspaper with such actions as forcing one of Brother's agemates to review books for first-graders and write a poem with a word that's nearly impossible to rhyme and ignoring Ferdy's suggestions for the science section. The cubs only went with the unauthorized newspaper because they felt ignored, something the adults admit was wrong of them.

* InnocentSwearing: Happens to Sister Bear and her friend Lizzie in the 2003 episode "The Big Blooper" with the word "furball" after they watch a video owned by Lizzie's brother -- [[ShowWithinAShow ''Trouble At Big Bear High.'']] In the book it's based on, the same plot occurs but Sister just uses SymbolSwearing.

* IWasQuiteAFashionVictim: How the kids thwart the school's new dress code; display a slide show of the adults wearing absurd '60s and '70s clothing.

** Similarly, "The Trouble with Grownups" plays with this-- since everyone on the show usually only wears one thing, when Brother and Sister portray Papa and Mama, they dress up in their standard outfits, which makes it instantly recognizable who it is that they're portraying. The reverse becomes true later when Mama and Papa dress up as Sister and Brother.

* LoopholeAbuse: In one of the novels, the former vice principal becomes acting principal and establishes a school dress code, and the students hate ''both'' the new principal ''and'' the dress code. So they study the rules and on the very first day, decide to piss off the acting principal by doing ''just'' this, and intentionally declaring that they are not breaking any rules. "The rules say there are no ''blue'' jeans with holes allowed... Mine are ''green''", "I didn't cut these shorts, I ''ripped'' them" and "It's not a Batbear Cape, it's a Superbear Cape." This prompts the acting principal to blow his top and put in an ObviousRulePatch mid-day after this happens several times.

** Queenie's mother is upset when her daughter is sent home from school for wearing a miniskirt, since Queenie was inspired by the outfits her mother wore as a cub. She calls the principal and asks why Miss Glitch, who isn't even Queenie's teacher, was allowed to do such a thing.

* TheMoralSubstitute: Not as bad as many other examples, but still rather infamously there are Christian Berenstain Bear books. Most notably,''The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question'', in which they are heavily suggested to be Quaker. There is also a Berenstain Bears children's [[Literature/TheBible Bible]]. [[http://www.amazon.com/Berenstain-Bears-Holy-Bible-NIrV/dp/0310726085/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344366089&sr=8-1&keywords=berenstain+bears+bible No really.]]

* ParentalHypocrisy: A mild version involving a school dress code. The kids adopt obnoxious new fashions, and due to an escalating power struggle between the acting principal who keeps making new rules and the kids using LoopholeAbuse, it looks like the school will be going to uniforms... until the cubs find a way to win by revealing some old sixties and seventies fashions worn by the adults leading the charge for the dress code. This is especially noticeable with Miss Glitch; the reason why the dress wars got started in the first place is because she overrode her authority and sent Queenie home for wearing a miniskirt, despite the fact that Queenie wasn't her student and didn't talk to Principal Honeycomb about it. One of the pictures shown of her as a teen is her wearing a miniskirt that's ''extremely'' short.

* RelativeError: The Big Chapter Book ''And the School Scandal Sheet'' has classmate Queenie [=McBear=] put an unapproved article in a secondary (and unauthorized) school newspaper about Teacher Bob being seen having dinner with a pretty teenager, causing a fuss and an inquiry for unprofessional behavior. Queenie's editor-in-chief Brother Bear angrily informs her that had she not gone over his head (which ultimately led to them being exposed as the writers of the secondary newspaper), he would have killed the story on the spot -- he knew full well that the girl in Queenie's photo was Bob's teenage niece, who was in town to visit him.

* RetroUniverse: No matter what modern features may appear in the series, the family always drives a 1930s-style car. The clothing styles tend to be evocative of rural America in the early 20th century. Candlestick telephones also seem to remain in vogue, but the series flip-flops a bit on that.

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: ''No Guns Allowed'', in response to Columbine and other school shootings.
** And ''The Sinister Smoke Ring'', which featured anti-smoking protesters, Brother briefly joining Too-Tall's gang and a moose mascot that might as well just be called "Joe Camel".

* SoapOperaRapidAgingSyndrome: look at Brother in The New Baby. Kayaking, snorkeling, and all sorts of activities. The New School Year is post-Honey's birth (to the point where she's walking). Brother is in 3rd grade and Sister is in 1st. No way is Brother 2 in the first book, and no way is Sister 4 in the Bear Scout books.

* TheStoolPigeon: A Concerned Claire version in In ''The Scandal Sheet''. The cubs of the school newspaper club are frustrated with Miss Glitch's iron-clad control over what they can write, so they rebel with an underground paper. However it gets taken too far when Queenie [=McBear=] goes behind everyone's back and puts in an unapproved story about Teacher Bob being seen having dinner with a pretty teenager ([[RelativeError who was actually his niece visiting him to look at colleges in the area]]), causing a fuss throughout town. Another article about how everybody hates Miss Glitch also caused her to leave school for the day in tears. Brother feels so guilty about it that he confesses everything to Sister. She decides to tell Mama because she thinks she could help solve the problem, who in turn informs the school authorities. This turns out to be the right action, because it helped clear Teacher Bob's name. It also allowed for the real student newspaper to reform to allow for a bit more writer freedom, and the cubs involved in the underground paper were able to learn a tough-but-fair lesson about reporter responsibility and getting the facts straight.

** ''...Visit the Dentist''': Sister Bear finds that she has a loose baby tooth, and coincidentally, Brother Bear also needs to go to the dentist for a checkup. After being preoccupied with the tooth for the whole story, the dentist seats Sister in the examination chair, takes a piece of gauze, and gently, but firmly, pulls the tooth out. On the next two-page spread, a closeup illustration shows Sister Bear looking joyously at the first baby tooth she has ever lost in the hand of the dentist.
** ''...and the Bad Dream: Brother Bear is an enormous fan of the "Space Grizzlies" line of action figures and playsets, and he bargains for Sister Bear to role-play (by playing games and activities that Sister wants to do first), and they eventually both get into the fun. When it's announced that a Space Grizzlies motion picture is releasing to cinemas soon, Brother Bear is, of course, thrilled. However, the cinematic experience proves to be a bit intense by himself, on [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse Avengers]] level, if the two-page spread of the battles blazing on the movie screen is anything to go by. This leads to the eponymous bad dreams (made up of the Space Grizzlies characters and the various activities from earlier in the story) that he and Sister Bear experience that night.

* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: According to the Big Chapter Book ''And the Ghost of the Auto Graveyard'', Two-Ton Grizzly (one of the biggest, toughest bears in Bear Country) is afraid of the dark. He covers for it by claiming he has bad night vision, but Too-Tall admits the truth to Brother and Sister.

There were also several {{Animated Adaptation}}s over time: ''Christmas Tree'', ''Meet Bigpaw'', ''Easter Surprise'', ''Valentine Special'' and ''Littlest Leaguer'' (also called ''Play Ball''), all of which aired on Creator/{{NBC}}. A TV series (''The Berenstain Bears Show'') aired on Creator/{{CBS}} between 1985 and 1986, and a second began in 2003 on Creator/PBSKids. The 1980s cartoon was an InternationalCoproduction between the American and Australian Creator/HannaBarbera units and Aussie's Southern Star (originally a subsidiary of H-B AU prior to the end of TheEighties, later folded into Endemol); the PBS series was produced by Canada's Creator/{{Nelvana}}. Nelvana also currently holds the rights to the older CBS series after Southern Star was folded into Endemol.

The entirety of the 2003 series is available on Website/YouTube [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUIixndCOJ8waZQoavUVxMSWIDX4Cpm3B here]], thanks to Nelvana's Treehouse Direct channel and the complete series was also made available on DVD for those who prefer that format.

* In the Big Chapter Book ''In Maniac Mansion'', a pack of thieves disguise themselves as the ghosts of Bad Bart Grizzly and his men (who, according to family legend, are supposed to be haunting Grizzly Mansion) in order to fool anyone who saw them in the act of carrying out their crimes.

* AntiSchoolUniformsPlot: * ''The Berenstain Bears and the Dress Code'' pits cubs against adults after some particularly crazy fashion trends prompt the school to take decisive action. After the situation escalates to the students threatening a strike (and teaching the intended audience a fair deal about political activism in the process), the school finally concedes when it is revealed in a public debate that [[spoiler:the dress code's most ardent supporters sported fashions just as crazy in their own youths, if not even crazier]].

There were also several {{Animated Adaptation}}s over time: ''Christmas Tree'', ''Meet Bigpaw'', ''Easter Surprise'', ''Valentine Special'' and ''Littlest Leaguer'' (also called ''Play Ball''), all of which aired on Creator/{{NBC}}. A TV series (''The Berenstain Bears Show'') aired on Creator/{{CBS}} between 1985 and 1986, and a second began in 2003 on Creator/PBSKids. The 1980s cartoon was an InternationalCoproduction between the American and Australian Creator/HannaBarbera units and Aussie's Southern Star (originally a subsidiary of H-B AU prior to the end of TheEighties, later folded into Endemol); the PBS series was produced by Creator/{{Nelvana}}. (Nelvana also currently holds the rights to the CBS series after Southern Star was folded into Endemol.) [[https://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2009-11-03-Berenstainbears03_ST_N.htm A feature film]] from ''[[Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia Narnia]]'' company Creator/WaldenMedia and ''Film/NightAtTheMuseum'''s Creator/ShawnLevy was in the works, although nothing came out after its announcement, and [[https://archive.is/20120911194033/http://www.reporternews.com/news/2012/jan/20/berenstain-bears-illustrator-views-hendrick-of/ this announcement]] confirmed that the film was "[[DevelopmentHell still in the script phase]]".

** Another notable difference is that the first couple of books were inhabited by different anthropormorphic (such as monkeys, pigs, dogs, giraffes, bears, hippos, and rabbits) compared to only inhabited by anthropormorphic bears (save for the Easter Bunny from the 1981 EasterSpecial).

* UnmanlySecret: In ''Ghosts of the Auto Graveyard'', burly junkyard owner Two-Ton Grizzly is terrified of anyone knowing that he's [[spoiler:afraid of the dark, and his wife and daughter do most of the night work at the junkyard.]]

-->'''Expert''': "Yer frammis grammis isn't gonna fit your ruckus gruckus. And furthermore, your rollagonk is outa whack with yer zantac."